My fifth graders all contributed to one rotoscope animation segment that became part of this international animation collaboration. You can see ours during the first segment beginning at the 25th second. I guess you can say we help get the rotoball rolling. We are so pleased to be a part of such an amazing video. Thank you David Gran, Art Teacher, Shanghai, China. Learn more about Rotoball here.

I was asked today by Melissa, art teacher in a Cincinnati Jr. High, to relay my experience rotoscoping with my 5th graders on iPads.I had mapped out a plan a long while back as to how I was going to approach this lesson and found that I did made some modifications along the way.

1. Students created a short video (Learned that adding transitions like fading out doesn't translate well when student did a contour line drawing-skip that next time)2. Convert the video to jpgs (try using MPEG Stream Clip (free download) Here is my screencast showing you how to do this.3. Dropped the images into Dropbox(They were all 001-335 already so everything was in order)4. Assigning images to students (I was taking too much time with this process. I should have just written the image numbers on tickets and have a bucket for them to grab from. Then later when I needed to reject an image, which I did many times on my quality control checks, I would just put the number back into the bucket)5. Import into layer in Brushes (yes----but they draw in a layer over the photo then hide the photo under the white layer before the turn it in. If they followed directions then it worked. If they drew on the photo layer. they wasted their class time. UGH!)6. Uniform protocol (We all chose solid black lines size 3, full opacity and decided how to deal with difficult parts of the video together)7. Turned back the art via email (They wrote their name and image number under the drawing in digital ink in Brushes and used the Subject line of the email to tell me again their name and image number) 8.Collect the images (I grabbed the images from email and renamed them by number and artist ie, "007jessica" Everything neatly stacked up in the folder. So I dropped them all into imovie with .2sec no effects and made the movie. It was too slow at first. So I exported it-reimported it and used the speed adjustments to make it faster. I tried gifninja to make an animation of some in-progress images.9. Tweak and turn in (we were able to submit it to Rotoball 12 after we cropped it to 15 seconds and added the ball in and ball out as required)

Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote for Declan17 to win Artist of the Week through Artsonia. I heard that 5th graders showed tons of support for Declan and shared their support via Edmodo. Here is a screenshot from Miss Feck. They randomly choose artwork uploaded to their site each week and ask art appreciators to cast their votes for the winning art. Declan had more votes than anyone in his age category! Yeah! So he will be receiving a plaque, a $50gift card from Blick Art, and his artwork posted on the winners page on Artsonia. The art room will also received a $1oo gift certificate for art supplies as well. His art was one of 335 images that helped create an all 5th grade rotoscope animation made on iPads. Take a look at the final animation below. This will be submitted to Rotoball12, the international collaborative animation projected hosted by David Gran in Shanghai, China. Learn more here.

I have a feeling that the iPads will be a wonderful tool for Rotoscoping. I'm working on a plan to try this with my students. Here is what we plan to do...1. Create a short video sequence that loops well (that my preference)2. Convert the video to numbered sequential images (I used MPEG Streamclip)3. Drop the images into the Dropbox App4. Assign each student an image from the sequence5. Import the image into a layer in Brushes app6. Create a drawing with a uniform protocol defining colors, line size, and strategy) in a layer over image7. Turn back the finished drawing after deleting the image layer via email with image number as the subject line8. Collect all images and convert into a video in iMovie or an animated gif using this tool9. Then tweak your final product to make it eligible for the international Collaborative Student Animation project, Rotoball 2012

About Me

Tricia Fuglestad, NBCT 07 is the K-5 art teacher at Dryden Elementary School in Arlington Heights, IL. She is the NAEA Western Region Elementary Art Teacher of the Year 2013, was honored with a Teacher of Distinction Title from the Golden Apple Foundation in 2012, named 2011 Illinois Art Teacher of the Year, and was one of 10 nation-wide to receive the 2010 PBS Teachers Innovation Awards. Learn more on the Fugleflicks wiki.